Polyester Chain is the Layer-1 blockchain that serves as the on-chain foundation of the Polyester Exchange.
It enforces custody, asset representation, and settlement guarantees, while trading, risk evaluation, and order matching are handled off-chain by PolyEngine. This separation allows Polyester to deliver fast, responsive markets without compromising on correctness or verifiability.
Role of the Chain in the System
Polyester Chain is where the exchange’s accounting and settlement guarantees are made visible and enforceable.
This includes:
- Asset representation: zAssets are ERC-20 tokens deployed on Polyester Chain. Each zAsset represents a corresponding external asset held in Zipper vaults. Their supply is publicly visible and reflects backed inventory.
- Unified supply accounting: Polyester Chain makes it possible to account for the full asset lifecycle end-to-end. At all times, the amount of assets held in Zipper vaults, the on-chain zAsset supply, and the total uAsset supply across the Funding Account, Unified Trading Account, and Lending contracts remain aligned on a 1:1:1 basis.
- Settlement transparency: Settlement-relevant actions, including inventory changes, minting or burning of zAssets, and other protocol-level state transitions, are recorded on-chain. This provides a verifiable history of how exchange state has evolved over time.
- Protocol contracts: The core smart contracts for the Zipper protocol, Funding Account, Unified Trading Account, and Lending protocol all live on Polyester Chain, making their rules and state publicly inspectable.
Together, these properties allow the chain to act as the authoritative source of truth for asset state and settlement.
EVM Compatibility
Polyester Chain is EVM-compatible, allowing assets and contracts to follow standard Ethereum conventions.
This enables familiar tooling, standard token interfaces, and predictable contract behavior, while operating under Polyester’s exchange-specific settlement and custody model.
Relationship With PolyEngine
PolyEngine manages live exchange operation, including order creation/matching and per-user trading state.
When settlement-relevant actions occur, PolyEngine submits the resulting state changes to Polyester Chain, where they are verified against protocol rules and committed on-chain.
This design ensures that outcomes are not only verifiable in isolation, but that the entire system state can be reconstructed from on-chain data from genesis onward, providing a complete and continuous audit trail across the lifetime of the exchange.
See PolyEngine Overview for details on off-chain execution and risk management.
Verifiability Without Exposing Trading State
Polyester Chain makes the exchange fully auditable without exposing trader behavior.
From on-chain data, it is possible to verify:
- All zAsset and uAsset accounting across protocol contracts
- Every transfer of funds between accounts
- A complete history of settlement-related on-chain events
At the same time, the chain does not expose a user’s current trading balances inside their Unified Trading Account or their trading activity.
This separation allows independent verification of solvency and settlement while preserving trader privacy.
See Trading Privacy for details on how privacy is preserved across the system.
The following pages cover specific aspects of Polyester Chain in more detail:
- Validators: who secures the chain and what validators do
- Gas Abstraction: how transactions are handled without users managing gas directly
- Layer-1 Benchmarks: performance characteristics and system limits
- Audits: security reviews and assessment scope